


Both Sides of Our Souls

by Raynidreams



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017)
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Canon Compliant, Dream Sex, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Incest, Multi, Mysticism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-07 07:00:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13429353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raynidreams/pseuds/Raynidreams
Summary: They are the darkness and the light.Rey finds out about her past as a new threat to her rises. Kylo must choose between existence and life.Rey bit her lip, eyes closed. “I'm sorry. I don’t know, being around him is like standing on the edge of a cliff. The draw to pull back or fall feels the same.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Delete and repost (apologies). I realised I'd made a canon error and had to fix it—that's what I get for only watching the film once and then writing 25,000 words. Balls.
> 
> I've changed the title to better fit the story.

Leia had said that they had everything that they needed. Rey sighed as she surveyed the few surviving rebels. The high of the battle behind them, the reality of their situation had begun to settle in. There were just so many people gone. Even as an outsider, Rey blinked away tears. She'd known only a handful of people by sight, even fewer by name, and of them, a scant number now gathered around the _Falcon's_ battered walkways and alcoves. These men and women had lost friends, lovers and family this day. It seemed like everything that they had fought for was on the verge of washing away. She glanced over at the General and her heart twisted. As if aware she was being observed, which, as Rey reasoned with a lopsided sad smile, she would, Leia threw a tired smile back at her and straightened her spine. The burdens of leadership were many, it turned out. One of those was appearing strong when weak.

Leia selected that moment to clear her throat, drawing more than just Rey’s eyes to her. “Companions...Friends, I must once more ask you to shelve your grief and pain. As useful as the, _Millennium Falcon_ is, she cannot sustain us for long. We need to regroup and find our allies. Firstly, however, we need supplies. Assume your former roles. I need intelligence on local sympathetic systems, or at least the logistics of a planet that supports oxygen breathing life.” Her crew stood straighter as she spoke. Several people wiped wetness from their cheeks. Leia looked at Lieutenant Connix, and then Chewie, and said not unkindly, “Lieutenant, Chewie would you assist her, could you see what resources we already have aboard.” The young woman nodded, accompanied by the wookie’s yowl. “ _Commander_ ,' she said significantly to Poe, “Start on nearby systems. See if you can contact Maz.” She shifted her attention to Finn next. “Finn, could you work with, Poe. Rose will need more medical assistance than we can provide from here. If there is a non-combative or easily overwhelmed First Order outpost nearby, perhaps we can steal supplies. _They_ can fix what they have broken.”

For a second no one moved, then as if shaking themselves from slumber, the steady crew put their game faces on and the previously still and loaded atmosphere of the ship’s recreation space became a hive of activity. Rey felt her heart lift with admiration watching Leia.

Leia had one last thing for them. "If people have holos or mementoes of loved ones, we'll find place for a memory wall. Work through these hours, then we will rest. Then we can mourn."

Leia eased through her crew as they busied themselves around her, the rebels cogs to her sprocket, them all working together for a greater purpose. The older woman didn't have to say or send it, Rey just understood from her own experiences: _keeping busy keeps people occupied. Occupied, it's harder to get lost in defeatism and fear_.

Rey’s forehead creased up, it was then she recognised how truly low she felt. The world around her flat. She nodded and looked for a job.

***

 

The job she found, however, wasn’t the cure it had quite appeared to be when she started. More a palliative. Rey muttered to herself and then sat back with a sigh. She stretched her neck to one side and then the other, popping a number of stiff vertebrae in the process.

"I was going to ask, 'how's it going', but I'm afraid from the look on your face, you might just tell me," said a light voice from above her.

Rey looked up to find Finn and gave him a crooked smile. She pointed with her chin at the severed lightsabre in her lap. "I'm at the point where if I could fix it, I'd might break it again just to show it who's boss."

“Contrary. I like it,” Finn replied. The ex-Stormtooper shifted so he sat by her side, their bottoms perched on grill of the _Falcon’s_ main corridor, feet dangling into the crawlspace which led to an expanse of paired back caches for running goods. On a mat abreast her, Rey had spread various tools, plus a pair of goggles, and some heat resistant protective gloves. She picked up one end of the severed sabre from her knees and placed it with the other half, amid the rest of the equipment, and then ran her hands down her thighs.

“Not got the tools to fix it?” Finn asked.

“Tools nor the knowledge. I need to take it apart to know how it works but it’s warped and melted into a block at the base. I need new components and who knows what else.”

“Something sure did a number on it. Ren’s sabre?”

Rey didn’t want to lie. “He had a part in it.”

New to having friends, Rey was pretty sure this was the moment when she should share her experiences but when she opened her mouth to begin, what had transpired was too difficult to break down into something so small as words. The impressions and images formed a misshapen ball, one that figuratively lodged deep in the cage of her ribs. Rey paused then sighed. Awkward, she looked at Finn fully, only to see his pain. He was in his own bubble of ill energy. Knowing his background, she would also lay a wager that when it came to expressing his feelings, he was about as good at it as her. She also wondered when, if ever, she would get to talk to her new friend for the sheer joy of it. Up until know, she'd had no chance to converse without one or both of them being on the verge of death. Observing Finn's tightly held features, now didn't seem the time to stretch those interpersonal powers. She took one of Finn's hands in hers. "Tell me about your new friend," she asked instead.

Resolute, Finn's face changed and he nodded. He grasped her hand and began. "She's called Rose. She's a mechanic. And next to you, Poe, and BB-8, the bravest person I know."

Rey, settled her head on his shoulder to listen as he talked about his and Rose's mission to Canto Bight. He went on for several minutes, hardly breathing, and then he paused. His face, dazzling when talking about his friend, now looked grief-stricken. “It's my fault.” He didn't say 'our'. “If I hadn't have gone, they wouldn't have known about—”

Rey twisted swiftly and with a hand to his chin, drew his face to hers. “You couldn't have known.”

“We should have had more faith in Admiral Holdo.” He rubbed his free hand over his eyes.

Rey didn't know how to reply to that. She thought back over her decisions. “We can only follow our instincts. Experience is what hones instinct. Until now, your leaders haven't given you a reason to have faith in them.”

“I feel guilty. About the ships. About Rose. I don't think I'll ever not feel responsible.” He stopped.

Footsteps came towards them. Rey looked away, off down the corridor. The ball in her chest expanded and retracted with her breathing. It was Leia accompanied by Poe. The two were talking quietly but the older woman broke away from Poe as she overheard Finn. She drew closer. She flicked her gaze between them. “I was going to say this to Poe and Finn alone, but Rey, you might as well hear it too. It will be the last time I discuss it and the last time you men are permitted to wallow.” She fixed a look at Poe, then softened when she looked down upon Rey and Finn. “In war,” she began gravely, “You make a series of bad decisions and just have to hope that some of them turn out right. It was a desperate fight. We can't predict outcomes, only make calls. You made a call. Take it as a lesson to mediate against pride in future battles. Do not, however, let it worm its way into your confidence. If you do that, then, my young friends, we've lost the war.”

Silence hung between them. Then they all replied, “Yes General.”

Leia's comm beeped, interrupting the gravitas of the moment. _“General, we've found a world to rest on.”_

Leia inclined her head and nodded. “I'm coming.”

Rey, Finn and Poe, watched her leave. The air, which had felt thin, appeared to ease back into the corridor.

“I'm not sure if that's made me feel any better, but I appreciate her not using the remains of your glow sword to beat me around the head.” Poe offered Rey and Finn with a wan smile.

“Glow sword, indeed.” Rey muttered, giving him a smile back with a raised eyebrow.

Poe came and joined them on the floor. He had an easy grace that drew the eye Rey noted. She felt his hand come to her shoulder, he gave it a soft companionable squeeze, before he bumped shoulders with Finn. Finn repeated the action and then cupped Rey's hand firmly where they were still joined. He gestured with the fingers of his other.

"This helped, you know—talking. The First Order, they get you to bury memories in training, propaganda. Drugs. That, or they just take them." He sighed sadly.

Poe nodded, expression compassionate. “As nice as a clean slate would be, buddy. Such a thing ain't really possible." He also looked troubled, then shook his shoulders. “Each day, the baggage gets heavier. I'm starting to feel like regret walking. But you're right. And I appreciate not having to carry the burden alone.” The two men fell silent.

If they thought their impulsive behaviour reprehensible, how would they regard hers? Handing herself over to the enemy. Giving up Luke's location.

Luke.

_Ben._

Her breathing hitched.

“Rey?” Finn asked.

Rey's forehead creased up and she looked away. "I'm alright."

"I didn't suggest you weren't. But you must have been through a lot and I care. I saw you lift those rocks. That's a crazy power. You _are_ amazing."

Rey met his earnest gaze with slightly wide eyes and then blinked away tears once more. Finn, the General, Chewie, BB-8, their concern for her touched her in ways she couldn't articulate. She nodded, choked.

It was at that moment that the ship exited light speed. Over the loudspeaker Leia spoke. _“We're going to land on a moon with a number not a name. It tells you all you need to know, but it has water and plant life. Prepare for descent.”_

***

 

Planet bound, Rey continued in her efforts to keep busy. Productivity was what had always kept her alive and now it was a welcome freedom from thinking. She had pulled off a section of panelling all along one of the _Falcon's_ interior walls. She frowned then grumbled a nothing under her breath as the pipe continued onwards and disappeared under the floor space into some dark subterranean vastness, out of which, one of the island's creatures flew, carrying what looked like a baby's sock. She blinked at the creature, then at the problem. She couldn’t imagine why anyone would have run the oxy-reduct this way. Spaces leaked air into one another, not retaining the nitrogen levels. No wonder fires still broke out. It made no sense to install it so that it wouldn't work. It was health and safety, Solo Style.

“Han, what were you thinking of?” she muttered out loud.

“I used to ask myself that a lot when we were younger.”

Rey wasn’t used to being surprised by the entrance of people, but it had happened twice in the space of a couple of hours. She’d always been so attuned to the presence of others; an intuition born of a dangerous childhood. She rubbed her nose. She needed focus. Small unhappy thoughts rolled in. She was tired too. Troubling thoughts aside, she welcomed the General’s calm presence with genuine pleasure. The smile she gave Leia was both warm and bittersweet in acknowledgement of Han’s loss.

Rey sat back on her heels from where she was crouched and then eased up to full height to greet the other woman properly. Rey wasn’t hugely tall but she had a number of inches on the General. Leia was tiny. Tiny, but as universally acknowledged, not to be dismissed. Size wasn't everything.

“This ship must bring back some memories,” the younger woman said.

“Oh, if walls could speak.” Leia upped a cheeky eyebrow. Rey could easily picture just how beautiful and charismatic the older woman had been. Even now she exuded an infectious charm. One couldn’t help but love her. “You’d blush. And that wouldn’t just be from the foul language,” the woman added.

Rey’s cheeks went a bit rosy. She cast a furtive eye around, half speculating about the geometry of the ship and the two old lovers.

Leia sighed nostalgically then. She tightened her mouth as if afraid to say more.

“It’s a good job walls don’t have literal ears then, hm?” Rey said to cover over the other woman’s lapse.

“Oh, yes,” Leia laughed. She sobered again and changed the subject. “I actually came to speak to you about Luke’s, about _your_ , lightsabre. Finn, mentioned that you haven’t been able to fix it?”

Rey shook her head, expression gloomy.

“Then, I have a mission for you. I want you to go back to the, Jedi temple.”

Rey blanched.

Leia held up a calming hand, non-verbally asking for patience. “If I can predict what happened, I’d say you won’t find anything there. No body. But maybe there is something else there which can help with your training.”

Rey dropped her head and covered for her discomfort by picking at a piece of loose enamel which partially coated an air vent.

Leia continued, “From an academic point of view, I’ve often read about the Old Republic and the Jedi temples. The skill to do what he did? To appear and interact with another place across the galaxy... _That level of power_ , his submission to the Force must have been tremendous. My brother was a true Master.” She gave another sad smile and put an arm around Rey, hand to the taller woman’s far shoulder in a half embrace. “I’m at peace with his sacrifice. I miss him, and I’ll miss him every day for the rest of my life. Even the years we were apart when I couldn’t reach him, where he’d shut himself off, I could feel him as I always had." She took a breath. "Rey, some Force users are strong enough to come back, if only briefly, as an apparition. I've never seen it, but Luke had. At the temple, it might be easier for you to reach him for guidance."

Rey bit her lip. What had Leia, said? _To appear and interact with another place across the galaxy. That level of power_...Rey hadn't submitted to the Force, but to ego and frustration. To the Dark. To Snoke.

Something tightened in her. _No, to Ben._

She sidestepped the fear. She asked, "I'll go. But I'll need a ship. And there’s a chance the planet will no longer be safe.”

Leia circled around to face the girl. “So it’s nothing that happened at the island that has you so shut off?”

Rey’s attention jumped to Leia’s face. The island did worry her, but it was only a place, although a strange and confusing one. The General waited as Rey swallowed her surprise that Leia had been able to tell she was adrift. Her shields like hackles. She leaned away from Leia and sought ballast from the wall behind her. “I didn’t think you could tell.”

Leia looked rueful. “Luke cut himself off for years. A tinkerer I may only be, but I know gaps in the Force when I feel them. You're not fully a blank space like he was, but you are pushing the Force away from you. You feel like a shadow.” Her kind eyes turned serious and insistent then. “I want you to tell me what happened.”

Rey for the first time could see the young man she knew in the woman before her. Rey wondered if it was possible to refuse her any order. Her eyes flicked with the same striking determination. No wonder the rebels afforded her such loyalty: her natural grace drew them in, her leadership had them devoted. She must have also given Han a run for his money, as from the few hours Rey had known the man, he’d been as wilful. No less willing to back down or take no for an answer. Those two indomitable wills distilled... she broke off from her chain of thought.

Leia watched her face carefully when Rey didn’t spill.

“Rey. This may sound harsh but I _can't_ let you falter.” Even without imbuing her voice with Force command, Leia was compelling. Rey slumped. Everyone wanted her to talk today.

“Allow me to understand so that I might help,” Leia finished.

Rey dithered when she wasn’t given to dithering. She then exhaled and nodded. She lowered her shields, permitting more of the fabric of the universe, its energy to flow back into her. Spectral breaths not her own echoed in the vaults of her mind. She ignored them. Within moments she felt more settled physically, spiritually, if not mentally. Reliance on self-preservation was a hard lesson to undo. She stood taller, dealing with the apprehension. “If I’m going to go into this, then Finn should be here too. He’s my friend. I want him to understand.”

Leia cocked her head back, the kind spark came back to her eyes. “Let’s get him here.”

***

 

It was quickly arranged. They settled into the cramped but semi-privacy of the cockpit of the, _Falcon_. Being on the ground, many of the crew were off scavenging or fixing external parts of the ship. Finn sat in the co-pilot’s seat, Leia stood behind, Rey. Somehow, Chewie had decided that he needed to be here too and Rey’s worries scrambled once more about revealing the truth. She took a calming breath and asked, “Once I start, please just let me get it all out. I'll answer your questions at the end.”

Finn grasped her one hand anchoring her, and then set back, freeing her as she proceeded to tell them. And she did. All of it. Finn was right, she concluded, as she came towards the end—it helped to share. The ball in her chest slowly unravelled. “Snoke wanted him to kill me. He chose to kill Snoke instead." Her throat felt thick, she wiped it with a sweaty wrist. "He asked me to join him. And, for a moment there, I...almost did.” Rey bit her lip, eyes closed. “I'm sorry. I don’t know, being around him is like standing on the edge of a cliff. The draw to pull back or fall feels the same.”

Chewbacca purred out a question.

Rey shrugged in response. “I'm not sure if it was, Snoke. I saw Ben again, after Snoke's death. Ben tried to work it out when it first happened. He was more analytical about it.” The young woman thought back to his methodical questions: _'Can you see my surroundings? I can only see you.'_ She waived her hand in a circle. “This is all new to me. I don't know what to question and what to accept. It seems similar to what, Master Skywalker did. Only there, he appeared to all. Maybe I should go to the island—I stole texts from there, but I can't read them." She quashed her shame. Luke had been prepared to let them die with him. "Do you think, Luke could help me read them? Or shut Ben out? I've closed the door on him as best I can, but he's still there. I _feel_ him.” Rey wondered if she should voice her real fear, which was that Ben might use her to uncover where they were.  She roused herself, but one look at Leia's reflection in the glass told Rey, Leia understood. It was night outside and the screen had become a mirror. Their images morphed. “I'm sorry I couldn't stop the ships being attacked. I'm sorry I couldn't bring him back for him. _For you_.”

Leia's eyes were damp. “Guilt is like holding a Rancor on a chain. At some point you have to let it go and face the outcome. I held onto hope for so long, but the cracks in him have closed. I have to accept that my Ben, is no longer alive.”

Rey's compassion ignited. She inhaled deeply and pushed down her discomfort to examine the issue. “General, I don't know if I can beat him.”

“You did before,” Finn, interjected.

“I put him down after what had happened with, Han. His mind was a mess. Chewie had hit him with his bow-blaster—a sure death to most, and I had your help, Finn. During the fight with those guards, I felt at times I was reacting instead of acting. But, Ben...he's strong. Well trained. He was like a force of nature." Rey had to hush the admiration and thrill she recalled in the seconds after the fight from entering her voice. The way he moved, the way she did, them together. She crossed her arms under breasts.

“Rey,” Finn moved closer to her, face earnest. “You could do things within hours that surely must take most people months if not years, to learn.”

“By accident. When he tried to take the chart from me...I took the knowledge from him. His mind showed me. We connected—”

“Nothing comes from nothing, Rey. You are so full of light. My son only knows how to use those things for his own ends. But you? You, make them your gifts.”

Rey's train of thought shifted— _Nothing. But not to me._

She got up and moved to Leia without analysing why. The two women stared at each other carefully for a moment, and then Rey fell into her arms. “I didn't want to kill him. I could've—I woke first. This here...If I have—”

“Shush, it's okay,” Leia soothed her. “Rey, he's not your responsibility.” Leia pulled back. “He is, was, my family. _My child._ I don't want him dead either. He does need to be stopped, but we'll do it together.”

At arm’s length, Rey missed the strong sound of Leia's heart against her ear. She didn't dip away as older woman's deep brown eyes sharpened and she examined her from forehead to chin. Leia eased a salt crisp strand of hair behind Rey's ear. The young scavenger was overwhelmingly and suddenly aware then of how much she stank. Her oceanic dip had been many hours and a fiery battle ago. She was also, within the comfort of Leia's arms, aware of how she hurt in places. Burns, bruises. Tears brimmed again.

Leia's expression shifted and she stared at her strangely.

“What?” Rey asked.

Leia's forehead creased. “Deja-vu.” She absently pulled a flax cloth from her pocket and wet it on her lip. She eased it over Rey's forehead. Cleaned a smear from off her chin. Under her breath she whispered, _“Kind, but sad.”_ The reverie lasted, and then she asked. “Rey, would you consent to a blood test?”

Rey shrugged, confused by the change in topic.

“Jakku had a huge battle there. He told you your parents were nothing. Perhaps I can find out for sure, so you stop looking. He said it's your weakness. Whatever the outcome, my son is wrong. Love isn't weakness. It's strength.”

Finn brushed a hand down Rey’s arm, drawing her attention to him. "Rose told me, we're gonna win, not by fighting what we hate, but by saving what we love."

The group paused, independently halted in their own heads.

Interrupting the moment, Poe arrived. He offered the General a salute. Although distracted, Rey saw his eyes track the cloth Leia held. Rey noted that his hair was wet. “If it's baths you're after, there's a pool. Chilly but it gets you clean.”

Rey smiled in acknowledgement.

Finn's face came by her ear, “I'd give it a bit, unless you fancy an eyeful. Rebel's have no boundaries when it comes to bathing naked. And together.”

Poe grinned at Finn's expression. "You should've joined us, Finn."

Leia laughed and it broke the heavy spell in the cockpit.

Rey let them all leave first, pondering events. Foremost in her mind was what Finn had conveyed from, Rose. Winning, thus life, was about love, not hate. _It was about saving it._

 


	2. Chapter 2

"I thought we were done with this game?" Kylo asked, voice dry. When he didn't receive a response, he turned his chair 180 degrees from the terminal at which he sat reading field reports concerning First Order forays into the Mid Rim. The sight that greeted him was a very different Rey from the last one he'd seen. That Rey had been distant. _Disappointed._ This one looked humbled and a little lost. There remained in her that ever present loneliness, but now there was also confusion and something akin to painful need. Her emotions were always easier to read than her thoughts and they wrapped around him like a mist, seeping into his pores, getting in his mouth and lungs.

"Rey?"

No response.

He wasn't one for rolling his eyes, but the small twitch he gave passed for his version of the gesture.

“What's wrong?”

That got her. Her eyebrows pinched in vexation. She showed the whiteness of teeth.

He championed the urge to smile.

“What's wrong? How dare you ask that!"

“Fine.” He ran a hand down his tunic and readied to sit. His knees slightly bent—

“Do you still have access to Imperial Archives? Can you search them from here?” 

That got his attention. He tilted his head, gaze sharp. He waited her out, but again, her silence overcame his patience. He wasn't used to not knowing other people's intentions. People's minds were less puzzle boxes to him as huge vid screens. He sometimes read them without knowing that he had. He used to speculate if it was because Snoke had bored into his brain so often, it was porous, and he sucked thoughts in like a sponge. Post his Master's death, Rey was the only one who hovered and she remained carefully at the periphery of his mind. It sounded counter-intuitive, but her presence was so bright, being in such contrast, it reminded him what his own thoughts were.

He flicked back to his haze of dark fury during his fight with, Luke. _Then I'll destroy her._

Schooling his expression, “Rey?” He prompted.

“I want to know if...If they had any success in cloning Force users around the fall of Endor, and before the last battles in the Jakku system," she expelled in a rush.

His boots make an odd soft clicking as he came towards her, each step economical and precise in movement. “I imagine the Emperor did. His clones along with Vader emptied the galaxy of the Jedi. It would have been stupid not to try to give them another advantage. But Force users are unpredictable." He let that hang a second. "And from what I've read, clone ones were almost always unstable. Difficult to control." 

Rey was clearly upset to hear this. Her hands clenched reflexively and a frown deeply grooved her forehead.

Kylo, asked, "Why do you want—" The second his brain caught up, he stiffened. “You said Jakku.” Gaze keen, he examined her face and form. She blinked up at him with those fine eyes, focus somewhere on his chest rather than his face. Even raging at her, he wasn't objective to her, neither physically nor mentally. Of little general importance, but obvious to anyone with eyes, she was striking. She was also a marvel of survival. For all her experiences, she was courageous and astute.

Rey was everything he wasn't.

He moved closer, stopping abruptly before her. She rested on her haunches, seemingly balanced in mid-air, but he knew that in her corner of the galaxy, she was probably pressed up against a wall. She was still dressed in her outfit from the battle; grey cloth caked in blood, soot, and dried salt. There was a crude bandage on her bicep and someone'd had a poor go at cleaning her face. "But I saw. They were junk traders. They sold you. You were small child crying in the desert. I didn't lie." He used lies only when he deemed them necessary. It was Kylo's last linchpin of his integrity.

Rey's mouth twisted up as she tried to steady her breath. "Maybe it was old Imperial junk that they were trading."

He dropped down in a clean movement, so they were level. “What does it matter where you came from? You are who you are now. No more and no less. What ever happened in your past, let it go.” He debated with himself, and then with a gloved finger, curled it under her chin so she met him eye-to-eye. His pressed his lips flat and brought his face closer. He noted how those fine eyes dilated distractingly. “Even now, my offer still stands. You, as you are in this moment, I want you to join me.”

She looked away and he dropped his hand. He hid his disappointment even as he'd expected it. He watched her grit her teeth, holding something else in.

“I have things to do, you know,” he prompted her.

She straightened her shoulders and then fixed him a look. “R2 had enough coding to note some genetic patterns. Give some clues. But we're...” she shied away, “Somewhere far away from anywhere. We've currently no proper equipment to check further.”

“You're still aboard the _Falcon_ , Rey. I'll know the stench of that death trap until the day I die.”

She growled at him. _Actually growled._ Kylo shifted his hips and placed his hands on his knees. “I'll look. It might be easier if you could give me a blood sample to work with. I can test it, and I'm willing to give you the information I find, and if also discovered, DNA provenances. In return for one thing.” The flush seeped from her pallor. She set her jaw, expression stubborn. Kylo watched, his own expression blank. “Train with me.”

“You mean, ‘let me get to know your weaknesses.’”

“Those I already know those. But, it could give you the chance to get mine—”

“ _Everyone_ knows _yours_ ,” she interrupted.

He frowned. Being around her was like jumping a live wire. It was a thrill, but he couldn't tell when he was going to get burned. It was as additive as his quest for control and as dangerous _._ “You still need a teacher.”

“I HAD one,” Rey hissed.

“Careful. Jedi are not supposed to get angry” he taunted her with a half-smile.

“This is stupid,” she cursed under her breath. “I shouldn’t have come.”

“Then why did you?” He searched her face. His pulse quickened to match hers.

“Goodbye, Ben.”

“Of course. But, first” He nipped forward, collecting the child's pocket knife he always kept with him. It was sharp. At the same time, he simultaneously grasped her hand and ran the blade alone her palm, lightly drawing blood. Like the rain from when he connected with her, her blood stayed with him.

“You...You!” Rey shouted as she tore her hand free. She clenched the blooded hand into a fist. Then she smacked him right in the face. He deserved that, he reasoned.

Rey, after the punch, launched herself backwards. The movement wasn't elegant, but it was effective. She ended up a foot away from him, poised battle ready.

Casually, Kylo stood with more elegance. He was careful to not to touch the blade. “A sample.”

“One of these days, you're going to learn to respect other people.”

_Touché._

He moved to secure the blood sample from contamination, and then shifted over to his terminal and typed. He commanded a medical droid to come to him. Having avoided them since the fight with Snoke, he now also sent an urgent request through to the Knight of Ren who guarded the First Order historical databanks. Kylo added the details of what he was looking for, and almost finished, he looked over his shoulder at Rey. She had been quiet behind him as he worked. “You said R2,” he paused, forever careful to master his relationship with the past and his use of proper nouns. “That the R2 unit found some suggestions. This to donors? Did it know names?” He asked politely.

Rey laughed but the sound of it was off. As her laugh died, he realised it was because the joke was on her. “No one and everyone.”

He felt a twinge of unease, seeing her so undone. He twisted back to the terminal to centre himself. His idle hands might otherwise try to do something stupid, like try to soothe her. “I'll look for you if only you stop you looking for nothing but sand and dust.”

“ _And Skywalkers,_ ” she muttered.

He twisted on his heel to find she'd gone.

***

 

Kylo dreamed that night about Leia and Han. He sat up in bed, cold perspiration coating the skin of his chest, and placed his arms around his legs. He pressed his face into his knees. The dream had ended with him in terror.

His sleep, usually short and disturbed, in the few days since he'd killed Han, almost murdered Leia, and brushed up against Luke, was practically non-existent. His dreams, during the few moments he did have, were filled with terrible images of death: Han's fall, Starkiller's destruction, Snoke—but mostly, he was haunted by Rey's face as he'd pressed the lightsabre over her, not quite willing to push her over that cliff.

He recognised, forever balanced on a blade, that his thinking was becoming increasingly impaired. He needed to sleep. For his sanity, he needed some kind of relief. Rey's appearance today highlighted just how shaky the foundations were that he was built upon. She shattered his attempts to block rather than analyse his reactions to events.

Her parting shot: _And Skywalkers.._.

She was going to drive him mad. He raised his face from his knees and wiped the sweat from his brow with an unsteady hand. _Madder._

As he moved his feet to the cold floor, pressing bony soles flat, the dream he'd had began to come back to him. In it, he'd been aboard the _Falcon_ , half asleep, hearing his parents argue about— _something_. Adult Kylo was unable to tell his age in the dream, but he recalled how he'd felt small but sturdy. Young but not a baby.

He indulged in sorting through his disjointed impression of the dream to see if he could recall it all. The inkling he had was that it was a single memory over a mash-up of different images. He bowed his head, eyes closed. It unfolded fully and he remembered: his mother and father were arguing about him.

 

_If he goes, people will ask questions—_

_Children are born with the potential from many walks of life._

_Leia, just take a step back. He could stay with me and—_

_Han, he's never going to be happy, fixing ships. Idling...I'm sorry. I didn't mean—_

_No offence taken._

(Ben understood sarcasm.)

_It's there in him and he needs guidance. He's so bright. The life you offer him—_

_He's not going to be happy with._

(He was also old enough to recognise defeat in his father's voice.)

_Please, Han. Hell. Why's it always the same arguments?_

_Because we already know the answers and still don't want to hear them. I'm sorry, too._

(There came a rustling sound, then one of a kiss. It went on for a time and Ben drifted back to sleep.)

— _war was, and always will be, only half the battle. What comes after is the hard and less exciting bit. I know you hate being still. But it’s important I stay. And Ben, he has a place here in building a new future. It's important to me that he is a part of creating and maintaining that something new. I know it's misplaced, but I have to atone—_

_No. No. Stop that right there! You're far too sensible for it._

_Guilt isn't sensible. And it's not just that. It's..._

_What? Leia, look. If you want him to train with, Luke, be a Jedi, then I'm okay with it. But not yet, please._

(The sleepy little boy's heart sped up in excitement. He waited, tempted to run to his father. Luke Skywalker was his hero.)

_Han, I know you feel it too. That spirit…That impatience. Luke can temper it._

(There were footsteps and a chair was kicked back.)

_I don't want to hear it. I won't fear my own, son, Leia!_

_I'm not afraid of him, Han. I'm afraid_ _**for** _ _him._

_It's dangerous for him to go, too, you know. If people find out, 'Uncle' Luke, is in fact that—_

(The little boy’s forehead crumpled up.)

— _What happens if the world and he find out he's Darth Vader's grandson. You will be ruined. He will be hunted down._

(The little boy screamed.)

 

Back in the present, Kylo cursed and stood from his clammy cot. He tried to drown the dream in the shower. He imagined the water carried it, his memories of his parents and washed them off him and down the drain, taking with it the quakes in his legs. It made no difference. He'd obviously buried it before because he'd stayed with his mother, blissfully unaware, following in her footsteps for some years, but now having revisited that night, it felt like the fear would forever be tattooed across his mind along with all the other instances of when people had looked at him but seen his grandfather.

He flexed a bare hand and went to shove it through the wall, but in the same moment, his senses alerted him to the fact that there was another person in his chambers. He dropped his hand and calmed his breath, slowing them and everything down. He sorted through each moment as if they existed as an ancient flip book. He then visualised the room beyond, all the corners, to where the Force pattern of the intruder emanated from. He didn't immediately call for his weapon, he parked that temptation. Instead he pulled on the loose pants he’d worn to bed, fastening the string at his waist, and then switched off the shower casually. He kept his head down, outwardly appearing relaxed as he walked out. His mind absorbed everything he could about the other presence and he realised that he knew them. He also concluded that if they were here, waiting in the room silently, then their previous comradeship was now over. The condensation from the shower billowing out, he paused in the middle of the room and stretched his back. Then he called for his lightsabre.

The other Knight of Ren moved as quick as a viper to attack.

***

 

His sabre hit his hand and he ignited it the same instant. His next move was a two handed arc at chest height to meet and collide with his assailant’s weapon. The two blades sizzled against one another. The shudder of the impact flexed his forearms. Twice in two days, he'd had to fight opponents who were on an almost level playing field as he, and he found the experience tested his skills. Damn, but he needed rest. The Praetorian guards had taken much from him physically, when he'd not been at full strength to begin.

In the present, he and the other knight circled, watching the other carefully. The knight feinted at Kylo several times, but he wasn't going to be drawn into attacking. He would choose the moment. He held his instincts open, body poised and limber. He wasn't for nothing, the other knight’s, master.

Kylo waited.

The knight moved as if striking from the high left when he was intending to sweep from the right. Kylo dodged with a spin and swept his sabre one handed in an semicircle behind him to catch the knight on the arm. The man stumbled backwards with a yelp. The smell of blood and burning flesh entered the air. Kylo, adjusted his grip, and whirled. Catching him by surprise, however, the attacking knight sent a dart of power at Kylo’s ankle—one swollen from the fight with Snoke's guards.

Kylo hit the ground with a grunt and then rolled up in the same breath.

His heart hammered now, adrenaline having banished his conflicted thoughts concerning the dream. He knelt as the other knight sent a wild swing over his head, and then Kylo charged his open torso with a brutish punch. The knight off balance, wasn’t as quick to recover as Kylo, who slashed at him on a downwards swing.

The two men returned to circling one another, examining movements. Kylo sorted through what he knew of this knight, pushing aside any sentiment of childhood. Kylo was larger and stronger. He felt confident of the outcome, but it made him question the other knight's challenge. If he’d gone rogue, had the rest? If so, why were they not here? Kylo was assured of his skills, but seven against one would be a real ordeal. He didn't have time to contemplate further because the knight was coming at him again. Kylo read the action and dived aside. The knight echoed his movement, their blades burring with hums and spits. They crashed and locked into a hold. Next to his unclothed forearm, the heat from the cross-guard seared the hair off. Kylo mastered himself and pressed harder. His opponent being forced down, yelled and dropped from the attack, swirling his blade protectively as he backed away. Kylo made an blindingly swift transition and launched forwards with a fierce jab. The other man was caught wrong-footed and tripped. Kylo's lightsabre plunged deeply into the knight's upper chest. He screamed, throwing himself away with a Force push. In that moment, Kylo scented real blood and doubled his attack, the endgame in sight. His moves now were fevered as his adversary's blocks became increasingly irregular. He pushed the knight out from his sterile room into the corridor where a maintenance droid squealed and ran.

Footsteps, oncoming Stormtroopers, echoed.

Kylo, body sinuous, forced the other knight to his knees. The knight's lightsabre clattered off. The man was beaten and death was his only destination now. Kylo pulled back, lightsabre held over his shoulder, poised to deal the lethal stoke.

He had to know. “Tell me why?”

In a voice harsh from exertion and the blood in his lungs, the knight replied, “There's no evil in sacrifice!” His eyes shone with fervour. These were Kylo's words, parroted back at him. The words he'd told them as they had taken down Luke's temple all those years ago. Words with which he'd convinced them that the true corruption was, Skywalker. The man continued, “You're no master. You're weak, Kylo Ren... _Ben Solo._ ”

Kylo tightened his grip on his sabre. He'd brought this man to this place and time. He should take what was left. He flexed his hands on the hilt ready—

The other knight laughed at him, then sobered. He coughed, wincing in pain. Rey would caution mercy. Kylo understood what mercy was. His face illuminated into frightening angles as his blade moved downwards.

The sabre cauterised as it opened up the knight’s windpipe and neck. His head toppled at the same time as his body.

Kylo stepped back then and expelled air held too long down his nose. The body at his feet was a broken mess of blistering a red.

He looked up. The world revolved around him. He marshalled himself not to stagger. Either side of the fallen knight and Kylo, a number of Stormtroopers now gathered. They held their weapons uneasily.

As always, he'd poured his suffering into his opponent, using his malice as a quick fix, lancing the abscess of his fear, and in doing so, made the founding wound only deeper. He'd known this knight since they were youths.

Kylo clenched his jaw and brushed past the Stormtroopers to return to his room.

“Flush that out into space,” he commanded.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Rey threw another bushel up to Chewie, then accepted the next from Finn, as he did from Connix, and so on. The four of them plus three others stocked up the _Falcon's_ stores with the thick reeds of tall, sturdy grass that contained compartments of water. Water that also had a high sugar and carbohydrate content. It wasn't really going to fill them up in the stomach, but it would keep them going. They'd also been able to find trees that contained edible nuts, providing a source of protein. The cold, dreary little moon they'd found to rest on also had aquamarine life that could feed the little creatures from Luke's island. She and some of the other rebels had found them a cute distraction from everything else, even if they were heavy on the Falcon's wiring and furniture.

She and Chewie, with some difficulty, had managed to keep the animals inside the ship to save them becoming an invasive species to the moon. Chewie, who said he hated the 'non-eaty-flappers', but whom had gently removed a nest from an exposed electrical panel, and who had also bothered to work out what they might eat, had proceeded further to catch them some fish-like creatures, testing them on equipment he had for working out inter-species biological poisons first. Rey, who'd never eaten animal protein in her life felt guilty about feeding a non natural predator with creatures from another moon, but Chewie had said the creatures would soon die if they didn't eat. He'd then yowled some wookie idiom about 'nature in tooth and claw'. She accepted it, but had to go to the washing pool afterwards and scrub her hands vigorously, even when she'd not actually done the spearing of the creatures.

Accepting the last bushel, she dusted her hands off and smiled at the people around her. They clasped arms, ready to retire for the night. The moon was truly a dull place; a long distance from a weak red dwarf, warm sunlight never quite made it through the atmosphere. The planet it orbited was on a slow rotation. It meant that they'd spent the whole day with skin turned an ill looking grey/blue. Nevertheless, however strange it may be, it was wet and Rey had come to the conclusion that she would never not be enthralled by rain. That afternoon a thunderstorm had battered the land. She'd sat under the _Falcon_ shivering, face enrapt for an hour. Only her heavy thoughts and the swarms of tiny blood-thirsty insects had marred the thrill.

She took in a large breath of air now, swatting at one, and absorbed the smell of petrichor, half tempted to follow the others into the warmth of the ship for a moment, but she'd offered to take the next watch and so, with Finn's coat around her, blaster in hand, walked to where several industrious rebels had used the stalks of the thick, limber, grass to construct a watchtower away from the ship. She waived to the current occupier of it for him to come down. Poe gave her a thumbs up, then descended quickly, jumping off instead of using the last few rungs.

Then man was good looking, she noted again as she turned to her. He was also charming. “Hey,” he said with a smile that made Rey's stomach do funny things. _Too charming._

“Hi,” she mumbled back, gauche.

“Goggles,” he said simply, with a wink.

“Thank you,” was her reply. Stars, she knew she was bad at causal conversation now. She thought about flirting and opened her mouth and then shut it. “Better get up there then,” she said, and turned to the rungs before she could make a fool of herself any further. Yep, Poe was too good everything. At least when she'd met Finn, she'd had the upper hand that he'd been the one to take her hand and then they'd had running and fighting and flying to deal with before she'd had to confront how handsome he was. A quiet part of her whispered about Ben, about how just everything was always too intense when they met for her to worry about how she responded to him.

As she got to the top, she was just in time to see the pilot on the walkway to the _Falcon_ where he met Finn. Watching their shadows disappear, she assured herself that there was always going to be more running and fighting and flying. Given that, she'd get used to the pretty Poe in time, and be able to speak without falling over herself.

It was a nice thought, the prospect of being able to get past someone's outer self. To, if they could stay alive long enough, perhaps have opportunity to become real friends as she and Finn had. She smiled to herself, glad that the work of the day and the interlude had distracted her from other things. Things close to her heart and exceedingly confusing.

She'd agreed to Leia's request and quickly the older woman had organised R2 to come, accompanied by the nervous C3PO, and the ball of excitement that was BB-8. Rey had unwrapped her left forearm cover, the line of her tan evident, and given the General her arm. Leia had pressed a hypodermic pen to her, flicked a switch, and Rey had jumped slightly to feel the slide of a thin needle into her arm.

The wait between when that needle with the sample had been withdrawn from her skin and carefully been placed into the droid had been pregnant. The wait until R2 replied with any report, agony.

She'd felt the blood leave her head at the result.

C3PO had felt the need to articulate R2's beeps despite there being no need. The little droid had practically wiggled with excitement.

“R2 says that the sample has been altered in some way. There's a base DNA code but that other things have been added to it. Mistress Rey, has...”

Rey's musing was interrupted by a distant boom and she was instantly on her feet from where her legs had been kicking over the edge. The structure beneath her swayed at little at her sudden movement. She looked down to the _Falcon_ , waiting for the light signal that would tell her it was a sympathetic ship which had already reported in. Blue light, OK. Red light, get ready to fight. Only a second or two passed, then the blue light appeared and she relaxed. She settled back down onto her rear, awaiting the ship's landing. It descended slowly through the thick cloud, and approached silently. It looked to be an ancient YT-1930 transport—one of these days, the resistance was going to get better ships, was Rey's passing thought, as it finally came to a standstill in the gathering haze and falling rain.

She took a breath, ready to wave at the people who would emerge. Out of curiosity, and the need to practice, she extended her awareness towards the craft. And something grabbed at her mind. Rey was too shocked at first to consider what it was, and then she realised. She screamed, forcing the other awareness back. Without thinking about what it was she was doing, she found and reached Leia. _“Leia, we've been betrayed!”_

Below, the first blaster bolts had fired before she'd had chance to put her one hand (the hand cut by Kylo's knife) to the handrail. She used it as a pivot to vault over, dropping into chaos. As she prepared to use the Force to slow her decent, her only thought as the air flew past her was that finally she had love and someone was desperate to take it away from her.

***

 

Due to her warning, the fight below was contained. Neither ship could use its blasters to fire on the other (which briefly made Rey ponder why they hadn't fired from the air), and so it became gorilla warfare, low and dirty. The fight for the rebels should have been easy, had the new ship not contained Force users. Two individuals. They threw back a rebel and half choked another before Rey charged into the arena, firing off three bolts from her blaster as she emerged from the trees. The first two shots were deflected by lightsabre, however, her last got through and hit one of them in the leg. Her mind filled with impressions, most of which she brushed aside. What stuck was who they were. _These were Kylo's people—_ The arsehole had talked to her, promised to help, as his creatures had come to kill them!

Rey howled in anger, firing repeatedly, not aiming with her mind, but flowing with the Force.

The injured Knight of Ren switched to attacking the rebels aboard the ship as she focused her attention on the whole one. She circled, firing shots that they tracked one another. Annoyingly, she was dependent upon the chance of one of her blaster shots getting though, unable to get closer into one-on-one combat without an equal weapon. She aimed a quick blast at her challenger's face, then one behind him, at their ship, aiming for a known weakness in the design concerning the fuel line. Her shot hit but didn't ignite. The uninjured knight, now aware of her intent ran full pelt at her, twin lightsabres held high. They swung the left and Rey leaned back, then they swooped with the right, which she dropped away from: the electric sizzle passing over the place where a second ago her neck had been. Hand with her blaster on the floor, Rey pivoted and performed a kneeling roundhouse, catching them in the crotch. She drove forward on the action, and used a Force punch to his solar plexus, one he half managed to deflect but that got him to falter. It wasn't enough, however. He bounded back with lightsabre jab, Rey only just saved herself from being skewered on. A bolt of friendly fire almost hit her then and she scrambled away, darting back out of reach. She needed to divide them to conquer, she concluded.

So she ran. And the knight pursued.

*** 

 

The skirmish was a fierce one. Rey shot behind her and ran in stages. Most of her hits would have been true but the plasma beams were sent back in her direction to explode on the ground and trees. She put her free hand out and span around one thick tree, situating it between her and the fight to fire with greater accuracy. As she shot, trying to think up a new plan, Ben strode straight out of the mist before her. She aimed a shot at him, which he instinctively went to deflect, before she realised that he was only here in her head.

“Fuck off, Ben,” she snapped. She jumped as the pursing knight sent a rebel blast on a new trajectory in her direction.

“Would you A, believe that I had no idea that this was happening, and B, listen to my advice?”

“Easy. No and No,” Rey gasped. The uninjured knight was making progress in her direction. Her blaster wouldn't hold off their advance for long.

Ben walked up to her side. “What are you seeing? I can read your thought, to blow the fuel line? It sounds a good plan. I'd suggest contacting the General. The wookie's bow will do what I sense your blaster couldn’t.”

Rey threw him an angry look as she aimed two shots to cover herself and then ran behind another tree. There, she shrugged off Finn's coat, freeing her arms. Ben followed and crouched before her. “Rey, I want the _Millennium Falcon_ destroyed. You know that. I don't, however, want to see you die on what feels like some turgid planet, killed by some renegades.”

“You mean, _and not by you_?”

“ _Not yet_.”

She twisted to look behind her and then back at him again.

“You really didn't send them?”

“Oh, I sent some on a mission to infiltrate rebel groups. What I didn't do, was order or be made aware of this attack.” His face compacted furiously. “In full honesty, I would have ordered it, but, I didn't. If I had, I _would_ be there.”

Rey glared at him and then at the looming shape which was coming closer. She cursed and closed her eyes. _“Leia, get Chewie to shoot the fuel line on their freighter.”_

“I hear movement. Rey, shift. Now!” Kylo ordered. Rey rolled on instinct and smelt burnt hair. She landed on her knees and sped off. Ben kept pace with her. “I can't see but I can sense. The man following you is a strong physical Force user but he can't read minds or anticipate actions. Be unpredictable. Then try to get one if not both of his lightsabres.”

Rey wanted to tell him to go fuck himself again, but she couldn't argue with the advice nor its veracity when she tested it, shooting purposefully way above the knight in a telegraphed move, a blast which the man followed with his eyes. Rey considered and then flung her blaster one side and gambolled to the other, causing her helmeted foe a moment of complete confusion as to why Rey had done that. Rey used the distraction to jump forward and punch the man in the throat. A big boom sounded behind them and a hot, greasy, wind ripped through the trees. Rey grinned, knowing that Leia had followed her direction. The explosion didn't derail her attack, and she followed the jab up with a classic upper cut, laced heavily with Force. The man's helmet went backwards and Rey sized the opportunity to pull his lighsabres to her. They landed in her palms with satisfying slaps. Without consideration, she used the sabres like scissors, and removed the man's head.

Rey felt Ben's frank admiration as he followed her when she jogged tiredly back into the fight. She set aside the self-reproach for another time.

***

 

The rebels quit firing as soon as they saw her burst from out of the brush, two swords blazing like some kind of deep-space, hell beast. Ben hung back, Rey understood, to save her from becoming distracted by his form. She charged with an overhead swing, which the injured knight thrust up to met, protecting his head with dual sabres. Several passes in, and Rey was sweating profusely. He was a real challenge, even with the leg she'd shot. He used the Force sagely and he was phenomenally strong. He'd also been fresh to this fight when her body had been running on empty for days. She was fast but slash-by-slash, he began to press her back. 

Seeing her struggle, she felt Ben draw closer. “The knight pursuing you is a stickler for routine. I can see from your body he's using textbook moves. Your lax fighting style will serve you,” he said encouragingly. He paused as if he sensed she was ready to skip in.

“Lax?” she spat. Rey parried, and aimed a kick to the knight's injured leg but was a second too slow to avoid edge of the blade that caught her in the thigh. Her gasp and stagger back, prompted Ben to ask, “Can you let me in your head? It's hard to coach from here. You look like a puppet with its strings cut, dancing around.”

Rey argued with herself, not sure how to even if she was tempted. Then she felt Ben open up to her fully, doing the opposite of what he had when he'd questioned her. Her internal argument ended. She needed help. To limit his intrusion, however, she thought about her brain as she decided to retreat. She leaped with Force help, up into a rocky ledge, leading the knight further away from the _Falcon_. She visualised her mind as a ship with rooms, using the _Falcon_ as a template. She extended the picture to Ben. She felt him follow it. The Master of the Knights of Ren sniffed at the image but she felt his approval of what she'd done. When he stopped appearing beside her as an entity, she knew he could see. She compartmentalised him, permitted him only on the steps of her mind-ship, and with that, he could look out, but not in.

“ _I didn't know this could be done,”_ he told her. She sensed his awe and fear. _“This connection...”_ He trailed off and focused. _“He's injured. Press him from the right, so he's forced to use that leg more.”_

Rey sent him a childish, _“Wow, really?”_ response, but she did as suggested and was rewarded with a small hit. The knight snarled at her and renewed his attacks. She backed off with another Force imbued jump.

“ _Jedi tricks-_ - _Try not to use the Force that way too often. It eats into your stamina. The energy is all around you but your use of it still replies on your physical fortitude. The more of it you pull through you, the more of your body requires mental and corporal muscles to hold and channel it. You have a habit of trying to light a candle with a canon,”_ he told her silently.

His monologue wasn't a distraction. From her mind-ship, Ben's advice was like following a thought of her own, just a nanosecond behind, like an honing echo.

After one swing where she'd been pulled wide, he said, _“Centre yourself. Use the power gently, like a glove holding a lightsabre.”_

She scoffed—“ _Centre myself?”—_ remarking on their locked minds. Also, _"Use power gently? You sanctimonious, arse!”_ She felt his amusement at her response.

She didn't have time to analyse it in that moment, but it amazed her later, how, when like this, they connected. Together in person, they just tried to kill each other.

The ledge she'd jumped to was a thin line of rock that crowned the smoke and fire from below. Sparks flew up, like fireflies to be guttered in the drizzle. Sweat and smoke burnt her eyes.

She clashed with her opponent, her lightsabres held before her in a cross, then she took a crazy ill thought swing wide with both, leaving herself open.

“ _Drop!”_ Ben shouted in her head.

She did. _“Loose one of the sabres,” he_ advised.

Rey ducked, sent a blast of Force out, pushing the knight from her to give her space, then let go and sent spinning, one sabre. “FINN!” she yelled. Maybe he'd find it.

The knight continued to harry her, he'd seen her strength waning. Ben was right, however, she was better at fighting with a single long weapon: the sabres were too much for her reach to master together. And more in control, coupled with Ben's pointers, she came back into the fight with renewed skill. It was just annoying that her blast to the knight's thigh had only burnt him. Examining him move, she realised he'd locked down on the initial pain. (She'd managed to do similar with her own wound, although it still chaffed insanely.) She continued to push him on that one leg. She landed another sharp kick, as she eased past him, which caused the knee to sink in. In a whirlwind, Rey twirled and severed his palm, slicing through the pommel of his one sabre. The knight howled.

“ _You've got this now,”_ Ben muttered.

The knight, however, wasn't ready to give in. He launched himself at her, agony fuelling his movements. Rey gasped and slipped in a patch of mud. She rolled, and scrambled up running. The lightsabre she'd been using skidded off the ledge into the nowhere of the undergrowth below.

She backed up, desperate for a way out.

“ _Run!”_ Ben shouted.

She wanted to, but where to? The drops either side of this ledge were a jumbled of thorny plants. To her back, the ledge shot up. She hadn't the momentum or energy to scramble up it. It was then she sensed movement from far behind the knight.

“REY!”

She counted her heartbeats as the lightsabre Finn threw sailed through the air. She lifted her hand and called to it.

With one final howl of might, two handed, Rey met the knight's charge, parried, and sent a hacking chop to his waist. She paused there as the energy left his presence. His body flopped on her sabre as motor function left him. Rey lifted her uninjured leg, and kicked him off. He dropped to the floor boneless.

Fight done, she switched off the sabre she held and moved to rest a hand on a obstinate sapling that thrust up from the indifferent bedrock. Sucking in lungfuls of air, she took stock of her injuries, the small aches and pains as well as the new burns she'd suffered. Her clothes were light but she realised she might want to swap them for something made of a nonflammable material in future. Just thank the Force for the rain, she said to herself tiredly.

She shifted her gaze from staring at her feet to find Finn, who found her first, enveloping her in a huge hug. It hurt, it was also the most beautiful thing. She rested her head on his chest, her forehead pressed into the patch of firm warm skin visible above the collar of his shirt. He was shaking she noticed. _Or was that her?_

“Rey?” Finn asked, pulling back. She examined her face. “Are you hurt.”

“Weary,” she whispered.

The others joined them then. Poe bounded up first, Rey saw Leia, and Chewie follow as other rebels hung back.

“Hell's fire, Rey!” Poe exclaimed. He didn't elaborate. He put an arm around Finn who still held Rey and clasped Rey gentle around the back of her neck—her only uninjured body part it seemed. His hand was warm, coated with sweat. It felt nice. Chewie gargled her a query also asking if she was okay and she nodded.

As Leia approached, Ben, who remained in her head, seeing through her eyes, scrambled to pull away. Rey seized hold of their connection and expelled him from the mind-ship she'd locked him in, but cuffed her awareness to his. They tangled, then he appeared, beside her.

Nothing happened for a second, then Leia gasped. Finn jumped and pushed Rey behind him, throwing her into Poe who let loose a confused grunt.

“What the hell is that?” Finn shouted, hand spread out before him.

Rey, catching on, put a hand to his arm. “Finn. Finn!” she repeated when he didn't seem to hear, his muscles locked tight with adrenaline. “He's not really here.”

Finn glanced at her and then back at Ben. “He? There's just a glowy outline in the rain?”

It confirmed in Rey's head what she'd suspected, that Finn had a touch of sestivity to the Force.

“He, who?” Poe asked. His arms were still around her and Rey took comfort from them before stepping away.

Ben didn't respond to this drama, his eyes were solely on his mother.

Rey calmed Finn with a squeeze and drew him back, opening up a direct line of sight between, General Leia Organa and, Benjamin Solo, her son. Rey quietly hoped that perhaps where Han and, she had failed, a mother's love might get through to him. She left an open mouthed Finn, confused Poe and Chewie, to position herself aside, midway between the Skywalker-Solos.

“General Organa,” Ben began. If he was trying to inject a sense of mockery into his inflection, he failed. His usually deep-rich tone sounded brittle—fragile and younger.

Leia's face was a terrible mixture of hope and resolution as she gazed at him. “Son,” she acknowledged.

Rey didn't edge towards either of them. She wasn't a natural arbiter—of course she sided with Leia, but there was no advantage in isolating him. Anger, she knew, would drive him away quicker than anything else. _If only he would bend..._

“I have already said this to, Rey. I did not order this attack. For full disclosure, I would have if I'd have known about it. It seems some of my knights, and I am not clear on how many, and gone rogue.”

“You were always a brutally honest little boy.” Leia attempted a smile but it was a tragic thing. Sorrows too deep to name flicked across the ageing beauty of her face. “Ben, come back to me. Come to, Rey.”

Ben's eyes narrowed and he sighed. His gaze drifted off, not looking at the present surroundings, but at and not at, whichever starship he stood upon. “It's not possible.”

“Everything is possible.” Leia took a step forward. All her defences dropped. “I forgive you.”

Ben took a harsh breath but didn't reply.

Rey felt his pain and conflict. It echoed her own. She ventured, daring, praying, it was the right thing, “Ben, this pain you hold onto—it's an infatuation. Don't be trapped by it any more.”

He broke away from his mother's gaze and Rey saw through his mask to the longing that haunted him when he looked to her. And then he vanished.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alas, as this one isn't a popular fic, I'll just post my draft chapters over the next couple of days for closure. (Although I might change the ending for this and keep the original idea for another fic.)
> 
> ETA: I feel lazy for writing the Knights of Ren as one dimensional. I'll have to search for a backstory fic for them when I'm done with this. :)

Kylo came back to his own thoughts with a crash. Unsettled, his first resort was the need to go and destroy something, but he tempered the impulse intuiting Hux was on the approach. He took a measured breath and straightened his spine. He brushed aside phantom burn marks, pain from Rey's body, and locked it away. He needed all his wits around the red-headed, general. The man was an odd assortment of neuroses that made him both malleable and as treacherous as a snake. Kylo had years ago pinned Hux as like one of those carnivorous plants that roamed then Outer Rim. They looked inoffensive enough, lumbering around. They were useful for their oils so no one destroyed them. But, if they sensed a wounded animal, or human, it would follow them for days, keeping back but never drifting from the scent, watching its prey grow weaker and weaker, and when the poor creature might hope for some shade or food from it, sting. It wouldn’t even wait until its prey was dead to sink its roots into flesh. Kylo considered that analogy in relationship to his own self: at least when he'd killed, Snoke, the Master had been at the height of his powers. Snoke's own hubris had killed him.

“Supreme Leader,” Hux greeted Kylo with aplomb and the faintest trace of sarcasm.

Kylo let him retain it for now. As soon as someone with as much experience and less acidity came up the ranks, Kylo would take great pleasure in seeing the red-head take a spacewalk.

“Have you got the reports from the other, generals?”

The two men fell into an uneven step as they moved through into the corridor, out from the antechamber into which, Kylo had ducked upon first sensing Rey was in trouble.

“Yes, Sir. It would seem that all of the Knights of Ren have disappeared. Odd that,” he tagged onto the end unnecessarily.

Kylo refused to glower. He needed to set more of an example. The ruse tasting bad, he replied, “The girl must have persuaded them to her side, after she took down, Snoke.” He used his distinctive quick-long, stride forwards so the other man had to hurry--Kylo resolved to distract both his own self, and Hux, from how his words sounded what they were: a desperate obfuscation around the truth.

“A young, barely trained Jedi...Her power must rival yours to have achieved so much.”

Kylo grit his teeth, lengthening his gait yet further. “The call to the light can be as strong as the call to the dark, but it is so much less rewarding. My former knights must have suffered a crisis of principles. It will be corrected.”

Hux's voice was wheezy when he asked, “I heard your request to the other generals was prompted by a personal attack.”

Kylo inclined his head save coming up with any retort and then he halted abruptly in another vein attempt to distract. Hux came to a stop with ease. A small smirk lingered around his thin lips.

“Loyalty. Such a fey concept at times,” Hux muttered, tone yet again just shy of mockery. He could never resist pushing, Kylo thought. He wondered if it was time for another demonstration of his power, but kick Hux too often and he would come to predict Kylo. Snoke had been savvy in his use of the general. He'd known unpredictability was what kept the Hux on his toes. For now, Kylo needed to appeal to his servile nature.

“In terms of progress,” Hux began again, wary of Kylo's prolonged silence, "We've established control of Tangeine and are pushing to obtain trading rights, then control over two other core planets. There has been a setback, however, more strikes in the mines on Pressey's Tumble. Without Starkiller's might, some of the previously conquered worlds, held in check by the mere threat of what we were about to achieve, have begun to resist First Order rule.”

Kylo could feel a headache building. He glanced around at the perfect machine of the First Order ship. Its gleaming surfaces, its sterile walls. Faceless people defined by masks and uniforms. Under Snoke, this had seemed like the ideal world. Join, you have a place. Work hard, and you can shift up the ranks. He twisted to look at Hux, then at a junior grade lieutenant, and then a tactical officer, and abruptly he couldn’t stand a single person on the ship with him. The awareness hit him hard.

He exhaled quickly.

Hux, by his side glanced at him with a frown. “Is something wrong, Supreme Leader.”

Kylo twisted to him unexpectedly and hissed, “Get the fuck out of my sight!”

The other man’s pale face turned even more ashen if that was possible.

Suddenly, Kylo’s mind, having linked with Rey’s, saw things as he imagined she would. He calmed in putting an imaginary hand out to her...Then anger flowed back, before it ebbed and rose again. He trod metaphorical water, dissolving. He thought about Rey, clung onto his impression of her like a rock, edging towards the call to the light. It felt as strong as it ever had. And this time, there was no, Snoke at the other end of his leash, hauling him back. Piecemeal, he thought about all that he knew he was, and the rage roiled again. What _was_ it he was actually fighting for? This soulless monster of a regime. The only people in it he’d ever had a remote connection with had now betrayed him. The only persons who had shown care for him in years, he’d killed, or tried to.

The rage must have changed his face into something glitteringly dark for Hux turned on his heel and marched away in movements that were just shy of a run. Below where Kylo stood on the mezzanine of the bridge, he witnessed the personnel below ossify, eyes dead centre on whatever station or terminal they stood before.

As he prowled above them, more thoughts of Rey's concerning him came back through from the hastily constructed mind-ship she'd created. He realised she understood his underlying fears, that he was worthless and inadequate by how passionately he resisted Leia and struggled to cope when things went wrong. What Rey didn’t understand, and what Kylo had always acknowledged about his own personality, was that evil was easier to cope with the more you did it. Kylo had naturalised to it a long time ago. Stopping now meant facing just how corrupted he had become.

He walked in a circle, his shadow casting a spell of fear over every staff member it touched below. He could kill every person here without a thought he concluded, and momentously, that terrified him. He was supposed to be building a new world order. And here at the top, he recognised he cared not a jot for it. His desire to shed the light after Skywalker’s betrayal and his sinking into the nightmare persona of his grandfather were notions reduced to ashes. The idea of vengeance which had powered him for so long was done. Luke was dead and by his own hand, _by his own sacrifice_...the Knight of Ren's dying words came back to Kylo. The thought didn’t please him but he pushed back on the storm clouds of rage. It wasn't easy, but muscles tense, hands clenched, he managed it.

The ship hummed ineloquently around him. The air was tasteless. The people, barren. This was supposed to be his cause. It was all he had left and only now did he grasp just how empty that was; the First Order’s absolutism only bred more mistrust and fear. It would never be what he envisioned.

_Ben, don’t do this. Please don’t go this way._

_No. No! You’re still holding on. Let go!_

The mental image of the hand he held out to her, he recreated. It looked alien to him. He shed the leather. His fingertips tingled. He'd never felt as alive has he had in the few short moments that they had spent together.

When they'd joined, she hadn't been able to keep from him where she was.

With one more glance up and around at the bridge he twisted around and left.

***

 

He walked up the gangway into the command shuttle without any outward show of this thoughts and boarded. He strode to and sat down in the cockpit as the comms beeped. He took a deep breath and pressed the link.

“Supreme Leader. We've just been notified you wish to make a departure. I'm...sor...regret, but an escort will take a moment to scramb—”

“I need no escort,” Kylo growled. Decision made, he wanted to be free of this place before he got turned around again.

“Sir, there's something else.”

“Well?”

“A report. You ordered an investigation into all Knight of Ren activities. They attacked the Imperial Archives. The explosion damaged many files, but with the information you—”

Kylo inhaled through his nose.

“— while not detailed files, summary information was backed-up. They were held in a different data—”

His tenuous grasp on his temper unravelled. “Just send me the files through, Lieutenant,” he snapped.

“As you wish, Sir.”

As the computer beeped with codes for his go to depart, Kylo noticed a file pop-up in one of the non-essential terminals. He ignored it for the moment and pulled apart a panel below the flight controls. Inside, he found the interface for the ship's tracker and flight feed. He disconnected them. Then he settled back in his seat.

“Sir, have you sent through your flight plan?”

Kylo tapped some numbers and flicked through star charts for somewhere reasonable but nowhere near where he was going. “Sent.”

“Confirmed. You are clear for launch, Supreme Commander.”

“Marvellous,” Kylo muttered back, and set the engines to ignite.

Free from the hanger, and at a reasonable distance, he took one last look at the _Dreadnought_ then, at a safer distance, he readied the hyperdrive system to jump to lightspeed. The stars before him bunched up, and space turned white.

Free from having to pilot the shuttle he took a moment to take stock of what he'd just done. He'd walked away from everything. Walked away to fly to a woman who rightly despised him. He had to see Rey, if only once, and then only to make sure non of the other Knights of Ren still planned to kill her, or him and then, well, he was free to... He couldn't conceptualise what, if anything, he needed to do.

He rubbed his face with the bare hand he'd exposed on the bridge. The glove, he'd discarded and left there, untidy on the floor. He smiled a nasty smile, thinking about how long Hux would leave it there, irritated his pristine ship was marred, but too intimidated to move it until sure Kylo wouldn't come and make him eat it.

Cheered by the thought, Kylo moved over to the panel with the new file and pressed for it to be sent to the hand-held reading tablet, which he could stand to consult. He needed to move. Frenetic energy was piling up in his legs and this day had taken more forbearance than he usually was able to maintain in a month. He casually flicked open then file, and stopped dead. The report was sparse. It made his stomach drop.

It consisted of memos in shorthand, made between the Chief Scientist of a specific cloning program and the Chief Science Officer of all cloning activities. The summaries were a list of dates and outcomes, given in single lines. Kylo clocked that the dates related to shortly after the destruction of the _Death Star_ , right up until hours before the last battles in the Jakku system.

He scanned the shorthand messages quickly.

 

In-vitro insemination of DNA to existing embryos:

Mortality by 9 months

%100 males deceased

%90 females deceased

Accelerated growth hormone given at 3 months postnatal (to surviving subjects). Repeat every 6 months.

1 year

Surviving test subjects: 5

2 years

Surviving test subjects: 1

2.5 years

Physical—exceeding.

Intelligence—high.

Subject showing signs of resistance to tutoring / is becoming unmanageable.

Program to be terminated: Y/N?

Subject tissues are important. Put living subject into stasis. Await outcome of military endeavours in area.

Received.

There was no reply after that.

 

There was one other item, not part of the memos. It was an original summary report of the project. It had been ordered by the Emperor in the same year as Kylo knew Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa would have been nineteen—the year the Emperor would have learned of Skywalker's existence. It must have given him some ideas.

They had taken young women captive, many from the upper echelons of Naboo royalty. Relations of his Naberrie grandmother, Kylo imagined with a sick feeling, then added a cocktail of DNA samples, stored from human Jedi Masters, aiming to create an ultimate weapon. Kylo could see the sense in Darth Sidious recreating an experiment that had worked: Vader was his creature, and Luke had shown signs of turning. Anakin Skywalker's DNA had been a major part, but there were also others. The Emperor had made it a game to collect samples from those whom he'd deemed had an unusual skill.

Kylo began pacing again.

Rey was family, albeit distant, the relationship confused. The splicing and mixing made giving a label to what she was impossible. There was enough there in her though, it gave credence to their connection. How seamlessly it seemed she'd dropped into this life. It was no wonder the R2 unit had been excited. She even resembled his grandmother, he realised as he sat back down. Not that he'd ever seen Padmé in reality, only pictures. His mother, once his ancestry had come out, had done her best to explain that Anakin had once been a great Jedi knight. His downfall was only one aspect of his life, as was Anakin of Ben's family. His grandmother, Padmé Amidala, had been a legend in her own right. He remembered thinking how beautiful and sad his mother had been when she told him about her.

He got up to pace again.

His vision of Rey made sense now. He could guess at the course of events that led her her being abandoned on Jakku. Scavangers, not unlike her must have found the lab and reversed the stasis process, explaining her youth. Then, when she appeared no more than your average girl, sold her off.

It made sense but something in Kylo told him that it wasn't all of it. The block in her mind he'd first encountered in looking for the map to Skywalker stuck-out as strange still. He worried around the subject and then readied himself to go and immediately tell her what she already suspected, but before he could, the control panel of the _Upsilon_ fizzed and sparked, drawing him out from his thoughts. He took a step toward it, but overbalanced when another small explosion rocked the ship. The ship exited hyperspace with a groan of metal. He put a hand out to a wall to prevent from being bodily thrown to the floor. Out of hyperspace, the command panel fully detonated. Kylo threw up a Force shield and threw his body backwards.

***

 

He came to slowly. His vision doubled and then tripled before he was able to make sense of the world. He went to sit up, but before he could, the dam of time ruptured: pictures stormed through his head. They had been held down so deeply, not even Snoke had broken them, but now they were free, Kylo could do nothing but witness.

The images, memories, came thick and fast.

He was small, running to his mother, her face bright— _love_.

He was aboard the _Falcon_ , sat on his father's knee in the cockpit— _joy_.

He was cross-legged with Luke behind him— _trust_.

Kylo wasn't given time to analyse these images thankfully, for the next to assail him was a whole scene.

He was in full armour, a youth now, tall, and armed with a red spitting, lightsabre. He held it aloft as he marched through the township in the torrential rain.

In the middle of it there was a woman who hid something behind her.

He scattered the group of knights who followed him with a silent order as he marched directly upon the woman--a former Imperial scientist. Her lined face was defiant.

She pushed the something, a child, far behind her with a hard shove.

"I freed myself from working for The Empire. I will not join The First Order."

Kylo stepped forward, Snoke in his head. _“If she will not bow, kill her."_

Kylo's hand moved. It was like a knife through bread.

“ _Good, my apprentice. Good. An old threat is no more. Finish this and return to me. You have proved yourself.”_

Kylo had needed to take a steadying breath as his master had left him and he stumbled a step.

The woman's blood mingled in the rain at his feet. It was then he heard crying. He followed the sound and realised that the child behind the woman was a girl.

He felt unbalanced again when their eyes met.

She was about eight. In her hands she held a small staff, poised ready to strike, even as she cried. Her face was a tragic combination of fear and fight. One of his fellow knights had approached while Kylo stood dumbstruck by events, and the knight went to kill the little girl with a stroke. His sabre cut through the Knight of Ren before he'd even cognitively given thought to the action. The Force had worked for him. Before he could think further, he made the girl sleep and she dropped into the mud like a stone.

Ordering the other knights to leave, demurring that his Master wished him to stay, he'd returned to the girl and picked her up.

En route, he boxed her memory, took her pain by giving her his last bit of light: _his memories of his parents, saying they would see her soon._ Already in the system, Jakku had been the nearest and safest place to leave her. It was nowhere.

Before he'd rejoined his fellow knights, without knowing why he did it, he collected his own memories, and archived them in the deepest chasm of his soul, along with the memories of his mother, father, and uncle.

 


End file.
